The House in the Cerulean Sea(119)

She hurried back to her shop.

Linus closed his eyes for what he thought was only a moment, but was startled out of a doze when a horn honked in front of him.

He opened his eyes.

An old green truck sat idling on the curb. It was flecked with rust, and the whitewall tires looked as if they barely had any tread left. Helen sat behind the steering wheel. “Well?” she asked through the open window. “Are you just going to stay there for the rest of the night?”

No. No, he wasn’t.

He lifted his suitcase into the back of the truck. Calliope purred as he set her inside the cab on the bench seat. The door creaked behind him as he closed it.

“This is very kind of you.”

She snorted. “I believe I owed you a favor or two. Consider us even.”

The truck groaned as she pulled away from the curb. Doris Day was on the radio, singing to dream a little dream of me.



* * *



Merle was waiting at the docks, looking as unpleasant as usual. “I can’t just drop everything when you demand it,” he said with a scowl. “I have— Mr. Baker?”

“Hello, Merle. It’s nice to see you.” It was almost true, surprisingly.

Merle’s mouth hung open.

“Don’t just stand there,” Helen said. “Open the gate.”

Merle recovered. “I’ll have you know my rates have quadrupled—”

Helen smiled. “Oh, I don’t think they have. That would be preposterous. Open the gate before I crash through it.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

She gunned the engine.

Merle ran for the ferry.

“Awful man,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind if he fell off his boat one day and drifted away into the sea.”

“That’s terrible,” Linus said. Then, “We could make it happen.”

She laughed, sounding surprised. “Why, Mr. Baker, I never would have thought to hear such a thing from you. I like it. Let’s get you home, shall we? I expect you have some things you need to say.”

He slunk lower in his seat.



* * *



The island looked the same as it had when he left it. It’d been only weeks. It felt like a lifetime.

Merle muttered something about Helen hurrying back, and she told him they would take all the time they needed and she wouldn’t hear another word from him. He stared at her, but nodded slowly.

She drove along the familiar dirt road, winding toward the back of the island as the sun began to set. “I’ve been here a couple of times since you departed.”

He looked over at her. “For the garden?”

She shrugged. “And to see what you left behind.”

He turned back toward the window. “How … how was it?”

She reached over the crate between them and squeezed his arm. “They were okay. Sad, of course. But okay. I stayed for dinner the first time. There was music. It was lovely. They talked about you quite a bit.”

He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Oh.”

“You made quite the impression on the people of this island in the time you were here.”

“They did the same for me.”

“Funny how that works out, isn’t it? That we can find the most unexpected things when we aren’t even looking for them.”

He could only nod.



* * *



There were lights on upstairs in the main house.

The paper lanterns in the gazebo in the garden were lit.

It was half past five, which meant the children would be involved in their personal pursuits. Sal, he thought, would be writing in his room. Chauncey would be practicing in front of the mirror. Phee would be with Zoe in the trees. Theodore was most likely underneath the couch, and Talia in her garden. Lucy and Arthur would be upstairs, talking about philosophy and spiders on the brain.

He could breathe for the first time in weeks.

Helen stopped in front of the house. She smiled at him. “I think this is where we part ways for now. You tell Arthur I’ll still be here on Saturday. Apparently, there’s to be some sort of adventure.”

“There always is on Saturdays,” Linus whispered.

“Don’t forget your suitcase.”

He looked at her. “I—thank you.”

She nodded. “It should be me thanking you. You’ve changed things, Mr. Baker, whether you intended to or not. It’s a small beginning, but I think it’ll grow. And I won’t forget it. Go on. I think there are some people here who would like to see you.”

Linus fidgeted nervously. “Maybe we should—”

She laughed. “Get out of my truck, Mr. Baker.”

“It’s Linus. Just call me Linus.”

She smiled sweetly. “Get the hell out of my truck, Linus.”

He did, pulling Calliope out with him. He reached into the bed of the truck and lifted his suitcase out. The gravel crunched under the truck’s tires as Helen pulled away with a wave.

He stared after her until the taillights disappeared into the trees.

“Okay, old boy,” he muttered. “You can do this.”

Calliope meowed from the crate.

He bent over and opened it. “Now, don’t go far—”